Rings of the Inconquo Trilogy

by A. L. Knorr

  “It’s claimed he established Kalhu in a time before we have any solid records,” Lowe continued, not hearing Jackie’s interjection. “In fact, it is believed by many scholars that the Nimrod of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions is a reference to Ninurta. Genesis 10:10 ‘Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord.’ From there, it tells of the cities he founded or ruled. But the text isn’t quite clear.”

  “A mighty hunter before the Lord,” I repeated. “That doesn’t sound too bad. We could use someone like that against Winterthür.”

  Lowe seemed to consider my words, then shook his head as he clasped his hands behind his back. “‘Before the Lord’ is not ‘in the sight of’ as many have interpreted, but ‘in the face of’ as we currently understand the language. He hunted in defiance of God, to show his dominion over what was created.”

  “Oh.” My elusive hopes withered. “Sounds less, um … inspiring.”

  Lowe nodded and rolled onto the balls of his feet. “Several rabbinical and apocryphal texts go much further, describing Nimrod as one of the first, or at least the first famous, militant misotheist.”

  “Misotheesey, what?” Jackie interjected, nonplussed with the utter debunking of her theory. I felt her pain.

  “Misotheist,” Lowe said in his most professorial diction. “Those who hate God or the gods. Ninurta, or Nimrod, hated or envied the divine and sought to usurp or free himself from it or them, as you prefer. He is recorded as a hunter, a killer, before his rulership, because the foundation of his power was slaughter. In fact, in some of the ancient texts, it talks about how the gods, sensing, maybe even fearing, Ninurta’s designs to rule the world and the heavens conceived a way to trap and defeat him.”

  “But they didn’t kill him.” I settled back in my chair.

  “No,” Lowe agreed, then shrugged. “At least none of the texts claim that, though many of them are incomplete.”

  We slouched in our seats, staring at the floor or some middle distance.

  “I don’t suppose any of that is very cheerful given the circumstances,” Lowe said with a faltering chuckle. “But it does at least point us to one encouraging conclusion.”

  I looked up from my sulk, giving Lowe a long look.

  “Care to share with the class, Professor?” I asked, not caring how snarky I sounded.

  “Daria hasn’t betrayed us.” Lowe’s face almost beamed with the pronouncement. “True, I question her methods, but her intentions, upon consideration, are legitimate and good.”

  Jackie and I were too gobsmacked to respond immediately, but Uncle Iry sat forward, cautiously raising an open hand as though he were in a classroom.

  “Sir,” he began, “you must help me understand. This woman, Daria, you are saying she did not betray Ibby but didn’t she give Mr Sark the key to free this ancient king who you just explained to us is a very bad man. How is this not treachery?”

  Lowe’s eyes shone with excitement as he looked at each of us in turn, his voice just above a hoarse whisper.

  “Don’t you see? She was disappointed that Ibby has not been more active in battling Winterthür, so she wants her to become more active. She wanted you to tell me about Ninurta so you can see that he is a serious threat. This is Daria trying to lead us to foiling Winterthür and stopping Ninurta from rising again. She hasn’t betrayed us, in fact––in her own way––the opposite. She is helping us defeat a great evil.”

  Lowe obviously meant this revelation to be some kind of great comfort, but one look at the other faces around the circle told me they shared my feelings of doubt.

  “Why do that when she could just bloody well ask?” Jackie demanded. “What sort of psychopath starts the doomsday clock in some daft attempt to get someone off the bench?”

  “There would be better ways,” Uncle Iry agreed with a nod, though his tone was gentle. He turned a sympathetic eye to Lowe.

  “They’ve got a point, Professor,” I said. “If that really is Daria’s goal, then she’s got a dangerous notion of friendship, and we can’t take it for granted that she won’t find other, even more dangerous ways to motivate us. If we’ve misread things, then she’s downright toxic. Either way, we can’t trust her anymore.”

  Lowe scowled, but looking around the group at our faces, his shoulders sagged in defeat.

  “Very well.” He sounded so forlorn my heart caught in my chest. “But promise me that whatever we do, we don’t treat her like the enemy. We may not be able to trust her, but at the very least, we cannot work against her. She cannot be a target, understand?”

  Lowe had always been my advisor, my guide. I wasn’t used to him giving directives. My mind flashed back to the vision of him from earlier, and I wondered if there had been other changes I’d missed over the intervening months.

  “We’ll try to make sure it doesn’t come to that,” I reassured him. The fact that we might have no choice hung unspoken in the air.

  For a while, no one seemed to want to speak, and then as the silence deepened, we seemed unable to break it. Thank God for Jackie otherwise I don’t know how long we’d’ve sat there.

  “So, what’s next?”

  To my surprise, it was Sark who raised his shaggy head, “We need to go on the offensive.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  Sark had something of the old, roguish sparkle in his eyes. “It means I have a plan.”

  10

  “This is a stupid plan.” Jackie slammed her back against the wall and slouched down into a squat. The tight denim strained at her muscled thighs, but somehow that made her look more dangerous than ridiculous. I appreciated that because we needed to look as intimidating as possible.

  Jackie and I were hunkered next to a hostel bathroom in a particularly seedy corner of Croydon.

  The hostel itself was a small step above a flophouse, but Sark had insisted that it was a safe place for him to get cleaned up and collect some resources for the plan he’d laid out. Jackie, who obviously didn’t like the plan, didn’t want to let him go about unsupervised either. When she’d said she was going with him, I went too, not just to watch her back but to talk.

  Sark was in the bathroom using the supplies he’d purchased in a prefilled duffle to tame his appearance enough to set the first stage of the plan in motion. I had removed the restraints from his legs, and the bangles were back on my arms.

  “I know you don’t like it,” I said, “but it has the potential to throw Winterthür off-balance. We’ll have a better chance of hitting them, and Ninurta, where it really hurts.”

  “I get why the plan seems good,” she said, baring her teeth in something that wasn’t a smile. “I’m saying it is stupid for us to trust a single thing he says. Of course, he is going to offer something we want, that’s what he does right before he uses it against you.”

  The words were hard and bitter, but the anger was directed inward. Beneath the fierce warrior’s scowl, I could see something of the young, naive, carefree woman who’d once trusted Sark, intimately, and had paid the price.

  “Ibby, if we trust Sark, he is going to turn on us,” Jackie snapped. “Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but he will. I know you and Lowe are thinking the enemy of my enemy and all that, but the more freedom we give him, the more chances he has to turn on us. Don’t. Underestimate. Him.”

  Those final words struck me hard, and rebellion burned in my gut. I wanted to rail, to tell Jackie to keep her sniping at Snark under control because it wasn’t helping me or anybody else. I wanted to demand her support and tell her to stuff her criticism, but I swallowed it all. Jackie was trying to help; the last thing I wanted to do was alienate her.

  “You’re probably right.” I hid a smile as her pugnacious grimace dissolved into a bemused stare. “But until he does betray us, we need him to get the ball rolling.”

  Jackie snorted but didn’t immediately argue, which I took as a small victory.

  “We are going up against some real monsters here, Jackie,” I said
earnestly. “That’s why I need you to help me keep watch on the one whose leash we’re holding.”

  She gave an incremental nod. Her eyes shone with unshed tears, though whether those tears were born of anger or fear, I couldn’t tell. She sniffed twice and then bought herself time by checking both ends of the hallway.

  “Okay, Ibby.” Her was voice thick with emotion. “Please be careful. For my sake, sure, but for your own as well. You’ve got a lot on your shoulders right now, and even a well behaved Sark could be a deadly distraction.”

  I nodded, accepting the warning and expressing my appreciation for her loyalty, but I felt my burden intensify. Jackie might be reactive when it came to Sark, but she wasn’t wrong about him being dangerous, and I did indeed have a lot riding on stopping Winterthür.

  The raising of Ninurta sounded so apocalyptic my mind struggled to contextualize it, but that wasn’t what pressed on me with such urgency. How many more Inconquo would they murder before Ninurta woke up, or they gave up? How many more children would they abduct and suck dry? For all I knew, every minute I stood here, another soul was being readied for their next attempt at unholy transfusion.

  The pressure of that thought made my ribs feel tight, and I struggled to keep my breathing even. As my powers had grown and my awareness of metal auras had heightened, I’d developed the focus and self-regulation to cope, but this was different. This wasn’t mental—it was emotional.

  I shoved off from the wall, desperate to move, to find some air.

  I paced the hallway, deepening my breaths with each step. When I reached a doorway, I turned back and made for the opposite end. By the time I reached the other end, the little trek had staved off the anxious constriction of my breathing. The pressure to act, though was still strong, so I made a bee-line for the bathroom door.

  I rapped my ringed knuckles on the door and sent a sliver of will to make the hinges rattle.

  “Time’s up, Cinderella,” I called, not caring how sharp I sounded. “You’re going to the ball, slippers or no.”

  Vague muttering came, then silence. I turned to Jackie, who shook her head derisively and casually drew the collapsed baton from her coat pocket. I was about to give the door a knock that would have knocked it off its hinges when it swung open.

  Standing in the doorway was the Dillon Sark of Christmas Past.

  His hair was salon-level perfect – I don’t know how he did it with limited tools – liberated from the hacking cut and blotchy patches of dye, while the mangy beard had been tamed into a goatee with just the right amount of stubble. The ill-fitting sweats were gone, replaced by a cream-coloured v-neck tee that helped soften the paleness of his complexion, and slim-fitting trousers. I’d never known Sark to need them, but dark-rimmed glasses were seated on his face at just the right angle to make him look clever but not bookish.

  He looked at me with a sardonic smile, my arm still raised, rings glinting.

  “Careful now,” he drawled as he moved past me into the hallway, shouldering the duffel bag. “You could hurt someone with those things.”

  Jackie raised her eyebrows and then held up the baton in offering.

  Frowning, I shook my head, and we turned to follow him.

  “I’m sure you were taking notes,” Sark said over his shoulder. “But since this is our first operation together, does everyone know their responsibilities?”

  He paused as he moved into a hallway from a horror film, head swivelling back to look at us. Jackie and I met his gaze with stony expressions and stiff nods.

  “Excellent.” Sark smirked and began to pick his way around the domestic refuse and strange stains that cluttered the hallway. Voices and disjointed music from the adjacent rooms warbled through the musty, half-lit corridor. I felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck. This wasn’t the way we’d come in, and the shadowed doorways would be perfect spots for an ambush, though Sark seemed unaffected by the menacing ambiance.

  Jackie’s warning of Sark’s inevitable betrayal echoed in the back of my mind.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, trying to temper my unease.

  Sark skirted a pile of bulging and splitting rubbish bags. He moved in front of a span of wall covered with bare, stained plywood sheeting and stopped to consider the flaky wood.

  “Sark?” I pressed, feeling Jackie shift her stance beside me.

  Sark scanned the hallway, eyes narrowed, and then put his hand to a panel on the wall. I felt his will reaching out, shifting something in the wall, then heard a series of groaning pops. An assemblage of gears and hinges that didn’t belong in typical construction began to grind to life within the wall.

  “Sark!” I snarled, drawing the bangles on my wrists across my arms in a second skin. Jackie’s baton extended with a click.

  Sark gave us a wry smile as the plywood swung open into an alleyway. The shadows outside were deepening, and the gleam in Sark’s eyes was uncomfortably like his old self.

  “If you want to stay here, go right ahead.” He swept his hand towards the alleyway. “But I thought we had work to do.”

  I took a steadying breath, but it was a few heartbeats before I let the copper recede from my arms to form around my wrists again. I looked at Jackie, who gave me a long-suffering glare before collapsing her baton. We walked out through the portal, and Sark put the false wall back into place.

  “See? Trust.” Sark dusted his hands off dramatically as he turned to face us. “I am trusting you ladies to do your jobs, so it follows you should trus-umph!”

  Jackie moved so quickly I hardly had time to register it. She quick-stepped to Sark and drove a knee into his groin. Sark’s eyes bulged behind his chic glasses, and he doubled over. Just as quickly as she’d advanced, Jackie retreated.

  “That’s for being an arse,” she stated simply.

  Her hands weren’t up in guard, but her feet were in a fighting stance, her left foot forward and light, her right anchored in the rear. The next move was Sark’s.

  Sark spent several seconds gasping for air as he clutched his knees, legs trembling, and knuckles white knots against the dark fabric of his trousers, but I didn’t feel a flicker of his will. He was going to let it pass, and I wasn’t sure if that made me feel better or worse. Patient, compliant Sark scared me.

  “Like you were saying, you trust us to get the job done,” I said, not to give myself or Sark any more time to dwell on what had just transpired. “And I need to go to the Museum to get my hands on the necklace.”

  I tapped my jacket pocket, where a scrap of paper bore Sark’s description. The plan was to use the necklace as bait for a freelancer with connections to Winterthür. Sark claimed that would lead to information that would open dozens of holes in the Group’s operations. Through one of those holes, we would dive nose deep for a shot at Ninurta.

  “Promise me you’ll get along while you shop for the rest?” I swung to Jackie, who shrugged innocently.

  “I don’t have a problem with that.”

  “Good,” I said levelly and then turned towards the man still wheezing over his bruised genitals. “How about you, Sark?’

  “I’m good,” he croaked and managed to straighten a little. “Just catching my breath.”

  “You going to make it there, big guy?” I couldn’t help myself from asking.

  Sark gave me a pained grin and a thumbs up.

  “Isn’t it grand when we all get along? See you back at Museum Station in two hours.”

  11

  “Evening, Marcus,” I called as I swiped in at the Museum’s front desk.

  The night porter looked up from the security terminal and gaped before spluttering a reply. “What are you doing here?”

  I fought the urge to go on the defensive. I needed to play it cool, or things were going to fall apart before they even got off the ground.

  “Nice to see you, too,” I chided with a light laugh as I walked past his desk. “I do work here, you know.”

  Marcus flushed. It might have been endearing
if I wasn’t so desperate to get past him.

  “No, I know,” he stammered, rising out of his chair. “It’s just I thought that you’d taken some time off. Don’t you have family coming into the country?”

  I pressed the down button on the elevator, hoping I wasn’t moving suspiciously quickly.

  “Yes, my uncle.” I gripped my purse to stop myself from fidgeting. “He came in last night, and it’s been fantastic catching up. But Shelton sent me a message that an evaluation report of a piece Meredith had left behind didn’t go through.”

  The elevator dinged, the beautiful sound of salvation.

  “Shelton’s wrong to push you on that,” Marcus declared incensed. “Family should come first, and even a prat like him should know that.”

  Again, I was struck by how fetching he looked, wide shoulders thrown back in righteous indignation. If circumstances had been different, I could have spared a bit more time to hear how I was being wronged.

  “Cogs in the machine, I’m afraid.” I sighed as I shuffled into the elevator. “But it’ll be quick, I promise.”

  “Okay,” Marcus said reluctantly. “Wait!” he called through the closing doors. “Can we talk before you leave?”

  “Sure.”

  The doors shut, and the elevator descended into the bowels of the Museum.

  I wondered what Marcus could want to talk about but dismissed the thought as the display ticked down the levels. I’d only passed the first hurdle, and I needed a good story if I was going to pull this off.

  ---

  I stopped by Cataloguing before going to Archives to make sure that the ingots we used for sampling and comparison were available. Technically, the samples needed storing under lock and key – several were precious or rare metals – but the ingot locker was usually left unlocked for ease of access. The locker had an electronic alarm, and I wasn’t sure if using my powers to open it would set it off. Thankfully I didn’t need to find out and the ingots were available for my little adjustment to the plan.